The Final Miles in the Northeast

In Deltaville Boatyard (Virginia) on a hot day Ken gets some shade for the fiber-glassing and painting project at the stern.

A young man we met was unexpectedly caught in bad weather, towed to this boatyard by the Coast Guard and now trucking his boat to the original destination near Baltimore.

Ken and Julie on the left, with friends, at one of the nightly cookouts at the boatyard.

Heidi and Mark at a cookout on a hot night.

Ken is on stage 10 of 14 (there were a lot of stages) of the project.

Next door to the boatyard is the Deltaville Maritime Museum with some great models of local crabbing boats.

Ed and Ken coincidentally both wearing their Lord Nelson t-shirts

Launching day, showing the finished painted bulwarks, while Ken touches up the bottom paint.

Going under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the entrance to New York Harbor.

Clouds lit by the sunset in Rowayton Connecticut at the Norwalk Islands

John (with Ken) has come to pick us up at the docks in Cohasset after we secure our dinghy

Near the end of our trip we painted our boat bottom while hauled out of the water in Deltaville Virginia. There were a few other chores that we attended to and then we tackled the gelcoat problem in the bulwarks, the area between the rubrail at the fattest part of the boat side and the top of the boat side. This area is about 40 feet long on each side and not more than 20" wide. Still, it presented a challenge. In the end we downgraded the project to working on only the port side at this time. Ken sanded everything down, ground out some old filler where the cracks in the gelcoat were, re-filled the cracks, added two layers of fiberglass cloth to the whole length where the cracks were, sanded between each layer, and then added two coats of primer paint, and two coats of final topcoat Awlgrip paint. Of course there was more sanding between all the paint coats.  The weather cooperated for the most part and the projects were done in 2 1/2 weeks.
In the meantime a French boat became our neighbor only one day into our project. The owners put up with our sanding and got their boat cleaned up for storage until next fall.  This boat had been built by the owners and sailed from France to the U.S.  three years ago. Other boats in the yard were from England, Spain, Canada and Sweden.
We had friends (Julie and Mark) join us in Deltaville to work on their boat and other people we know visited for a day or two on their way by.  We met Julie and Mark eight years ago; now they have bought a catamaran. It will need some work so they are there for a while and they organized a cookout almost every night. Other boaters they knew were getting their boats ready for storage and joined us. Our catamaran friends also have a car and we joined them on shopping trips.
Another couple who own a Lord Nelson Victory tug, Ed and Maryann, live nearby and  picked us up one night to join them for a restaurant dinner, followed by dessert on their boat THISTLE. They had recently completed some nice renovations to their boat and it gleamed!
We were launched on May 11, and left the next day for home. Unfortunately the next 2 days were terrible for boating, too windy and rough. Twice we left our anchorage only to return part way and duck for cover. After 12 miles total forward progress on those two days we did better, getting to Galesville, MD on day 3. Another day of waiting out the wind in Galesville led to 7  straight days of good traveling weather, and while in Galesville we were able to treat ourselves to a lot of walking as well as eating out lunch and dinner.
So, 7 days of good weather, and we wanted to make the best of it! We did not put the dinghy back in the water and we stayed on anchor or on moorings, so all our ports were viewed from the water, but we stayed in New Jersey at Cohansey River, Atlantic City, and Atlantic Highlands near New York City, then Connecticut at the Norwalk Islands, Fishers Island off the coast but technically in New York, then Onset in Massachusetts, then back to our homeport Cohasset. Highlights were seeing a whale surface right near our bow and twist around to avoid us off of New Jersey, and when we went through the East River in NYC we saw one of the bigger (49 ft.) Lord Nelson Victory Tugs at its dock. The boat is LUCY and is the only big one on the east coast north of Florida. We have found Long Island Sound to be fairly easy to cruise in, with a protected shore on the north or the south depending on the wind. Our food supplies held up through the week and we remained good friends, who just needed a "little" break from each other at the end!
Adding up the mileage we went almost 4000 nautical miles on this trip. We get about 4 miles to a gallon so that is 1000 gallons of fuel. There were no breakdowns, and only a few incidents that you might call "mishaps".  Not bad for 7 1/2 months on the water.
Our good friend John Campbell picked us up and drove us back to our house in Duxbury with a few of our things (and three bags of laundry!). Now we can focus on seeing our grandkids, catching up with lawn work, and visiting with friends. We feel it was a successful trip and VICTORIOUS is a very comfortable boat to travel on. We'd like to send Big Thanks to those of you who contributed to our comfort, sheltering us when it was windy, feeding us, visiting us, planning social activities for us, watching our house, forwarding our mail, etc.